Qantas cuts Sydney engineers

Qantas has announced that 108 engineering positions in Sydney will be lost as part of its restructuring of its maintenance operations.

“As older aircraft are replaced with modern aircraft that have more advanced technology and require less maintenance, less often, there is a reduction in workload for our aircraft maintenance engineers,” Qantas Domestic CEO Lyell Strambi said in a statement.

The loss of jobs in Sydney will be offset by the creation of 72 new engineering positions in Melbourne. Qantas says that it would offer affected workers relocation to Melbourne or Brisbane.

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The job losses come after Qantas’s recent stoush with the engineer’s union over its move to a ‘maintenance on demand’ system for its domestically operated Boeing 737-800s and Airbus A330s, which sees pilots complete preflight inspections and engineers only called out if requested. The union had ordered its members to continue to do preflight checks on the aircraft, but was forced to withdraw that after Fair Work Australia upheld a complaint by Qantas.